Plans for next season and musings

Posted on December 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

I have a number of things I want to try, based on what I’ve tried so far and what’s left to accomplish. The goal was to grow every survival-style crop, either in a pot or in a small section of garden, and be able to get a decent yield and seeds for future use. I also wanted to harvest, prepare, and store each one. Here’s the “success” list to date:

Carrots
Onions
Wheat
Basil
Berries
Chives
Kale

Here’s the ones I am still working on:

Oregano (waiting for them to go to seed)
Broccoli. I just cannot win, the damn worms strip the plants or they flower immediately without making a decent floret. I may try using new dirt and putting window screen around them to keep the moths out.
Leeks. I have a crop in a totally inadequate location, will try again but fingers crossed they may shoot up in the spring.
Celery. Grew fine but waiting on seed….
Potatoes.
Corn. It’s a variety/timing issue, I can get small ears of the painted mountain corn but it’s just not yielding. I have plenty of seed now, but now enough to mill into corn meal. Here’s the plants at the peak:

Next spring:

Sweet corn.
Sorghum. Big win, will do a large plot and then refine the syrup making process. I keep finding out what I’m doing wrong, last time it was not allowing the syrup to settle out the sediment and starch particles, plus not taking the stalks at the soft dough stage. I wanted to get a ton of seeds, so I left them in too long. It made the syrup taste grassy/borderline unpleasant. I’ll also make the big press, the little one was a total PITA to run.
Peanuts. High hopes for these bad boys.
Herbs in the ground vs in planters.

Potato late fall update

Posted on December 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

It’s been a while since I posted, busy at work/home but I’ve had a bunch of little things percolating in the background. The main focus has been potatoes, the goal was to try out growing them in a pot with the option to add height/dirt to maximize the yield. I initially bought potato seeds, these germinated but have all died over time. I first tried in the spring, the plants came up but wilted from the heat and/or got fungus. I tried again later in the summer, with the pots in the shade such that only got morning sun. This seemed to work OK, the plants grew slowly and then took off like mad when the fall rains and cooler temps came:

Sadly, the advent of evening 40s killed both of the plants. It could be the variety, but they only do well in a very narrow temperature and humidity window and with a limited amount of light.

As a lark, I tossed a bunch of small red grocery store spuds into a big pot at home, and in a the plot at work. This was a big success, as seen here:

There are three plants in the leftmost pot, all thriving. I wheel them out during the day or whenever the temps are above 50. The work plants have died back, we got an unexpected frost and that nipped the foliage pretty good. They may come back in the spring, but just in case I’ll sow another row 6-8″ deep so they overwinter. You can’t see it very well, but there’s a section of lawn edging bent into a circle above the pot rim. This was my way of quickly adding height, I’m stopping at one section just to see how it works. If I’m lucky, I’ll get new potatoes in January.

This is a new crop for me, so I had no idea how they grew here and what to do. I have a much better understanding now, not complete but getting some basic competence.

Progress on the sorghum, corn, and sunflower plot

Posted on July 25, 2015 by BigDuke6

The small plot I made at work is doing well (mostly). I planted about 50 oil seed sunflowers, 25 Sugardrip Sorghum (milo) plants, with Tophat and Painted Mountain corn. These were a few of the essential crops I needed for long-term use, so I wanted to see how they faired in an area similar to a suburban front yard. That’s pretty much what this land is, so it was a perfect proxy for the experiment. If hard times occur, we would need to plant every usable square foot in order to get by. Here’s the pics:

Sorghum

Beautiful!! nice tall stalks, big seed heads which is exactly what you need. It didn’t need much care, just some water in the beginning and a small shot of nitrogen. I need to get a few stalks out and press them for juice, I may have gone past the optimal syrup point but it might work. The seed will be kept for planting, and the rest milled into flour. I’ve never eaten millet, but apparently it’s a staple in developing countries. Sure is easy to grow, so mark this as a win. Flour and syrup from the same plant, what more can you ask for?

Sunflowers

All the plants are growing well, but they are short compared to what I’m used to. This is a new variety, so maybe that’s the way it was bred. I had a problem with deer cropping the leaves, they pushed the fence in and over the plants, and where they couldn’t do that they leaned over and did it. I ran three strands of barbed wire up some posts, fixed that problem. You can see it in the pic, works great but is a killer to work around. I see how a spiral of this loosely staked would stop intruders, the barbs are sharp as hell and snag anything. You would be totally stuck hitting this stuff, and I am keeping a roll in stock just in case. Good luck getting past it.

Corn

Sadly, the corn is not doing that great. All the plants are stunted, and the ears that made seem to be small and partially developed. There was a lot of fungus in the ears, and a lot of them were sprouting when I pulled them. I have plenty of seed now, but eating would be problematic. I don’t know exactly why this happened, but I think it’s a lack of nitrogen (corn is a grass) coupled with the wrong variety for this area. I think these were developed for places like the Pacific Northwest, or cool short seasons. I’ll try this again, using a different one and of course dressing the shit out of the fertilizer. I’m amazed how much you need to grow wheat and corn, I didn’t think it was that critical but it is. Which is an important lesson; make sure you have a big barrel of fertilizer on hand or you can’t grow the traditional cereal grains. Maybe you could use dung or compost, but that’s a luxury and won’t be handy initially.

Scythed Wheat

Winter variety. This turned out absolutely perfect, great yield and well formed heads. No rust or smut. Win!

Spring Variety. Started out well, but didn’t grow as robust as the winter and developed a slight dark coloration on the heads. I think it’s a fungus, it wasn’t wet (actually dry) but it appeared when it was ripening. It seems to be just the husk, the kernels are OK but I’m leery of any grain fungus. Ergot is a common rye problem and causes horrible health problems if consumed.

Miscellaneous stuff

The herb garden is rocking. Basil, oregano, thyme, chives, dill, etc. All doing well, and boy they sure taste good. I never had fresh spices, these are the best. I added a blueberry bush to the berry patch, yielded a good crop and I learned that you need plastic mesh if you want to keep any. Catbirds and robins go for any berries, so lesson learned. Broccoli is still sucking, I gave up trying to spray for caterpillars. I think the only way to stop it is to make a house screened enclosure over the plants (next year).

Lots of plants made seed; I harvested onion, kale, broccoli, wheat, bell pepper, and now carrots and basil (waiting for them to dry). I need to successfully grow a crop from seed before declaring victory, that is in progress. Already did hot pepper and cherry tomato, the trick was to let the fruit drop and overwinter in the dirt. Drying them didn’t work, supposedly there’s a coating on the seed that needs to be there for it to germinate. More work needed on those, I guess.

Wheat is on!

Posted on May 10, 2015 by BigDuke6

Wheat

The winter wheat has done very, very well and has headed out:

The trick was adding straight nitrogen grass fertilizer when I plowed it up, and then “top dressing” more when the flag leaf appeared. Being related to grass, it likes the same conditions and you can get everything at the hardware store to take care of it. Around July it should ripen and be ready to cut and thresh.

Summer wheat is following the same path:
The flag leaves are appearing, tillering fine and looking fabulous. You only need to plant a single seed every 8-12″, the plant “tillers” and spreads out. Sowing broadcast style (I did this last year) wastes seed and seemed to starve the plants.

Other developments

Sunflowers and the oil press

I secured an area around work that is open and unused, I put in around 50 oil seed plants so I can get a gallon of seed for the oil press. I fabricated the press last year but haven’t had to time to squeeze the small batch of seed from last years crop.

This is a modification of the old 70s article design, I used a special top plate (on the left) with a sleeve to fit the Harbor Freight hydraulic press pilot rod. The ram (on the right) fits inside the cylinder, and rests on the metal collection pan which is on top the big baseplate supplied with the press. Note the nuts welded to the cylinder; those allow easy cleanout of the compressed seed bolus which is a major PITA on other presses. Been too busy to try it, but it should work. Side note: it takes FOREVER to drill all those 1/8″ holes in 1/4″ steel, gotta buy 2-3 carbide die drills and use a drill press with V blocks if you value your sanity. I guess you could do it with a hand drill and plain drills but I wouldn’t want to.

Carrots

The damp sand mini root cellar worked awesome, I filled a big Tupperware bin with play sand and set 10 carrots in it last October. I pulled them out this March, most were just fine but some rotted. The taste was sort of funky, they should have been outdoors but they were in my basement at 55-60 degrees. They weren’t nearly as good as the ones I left in the pots, but would have been fine cooked in a stew. For survival = win.

My existing plants overwintered OK, and are sending up new growth. So I guess you can use this mode of propagation vs seed, which is cool.

Potatoes

I ordered 200 seeds from a guy in Wisconsin, planted two and I have a robust seedling coming up. This is the start of the Great Spud Experiment, it’s in a big pot for now but will go to a tower to see how many pounds I can get out of a 2’x2′ footprint. Stay tuned.

Bread et al

I made two batches of wheat bread using purchased hard wheat, the grinding went flawlessly but the bread was right out the Stalag Luft 17 ration bucket. Flat, dense, and heavy as a lead bar.I didn’t knead it long enough the first time, then didn’t use enough dough in the loaf pan the second time. I’m trying it again, this time 2 1/2 cups of flour per pan and 12 minutes of kneading. Tortillas were a smashing success, turned out great but were kinda oily for my taste. But OMG they good right off the griddle.

Corn and Sorghum

Put these in the same area at work, corn will be hulled and dried for meal and seed. The sorghum (also called milo where I’m from) can be used to make syrup. The oil press will accept cut up cane stalks, the juice is boiled down to make the the syrup. The plants are already up, very excited to harvest all the produce.

The winter garden

Posted on December 21, 2014 by BigDuke6

It’s almost Christmas, and the carrots and broccoli are still green and outside. This was an unintentional experiment, I was too lazy to move them indoors but now it’s fun to see what happens. Average overnight temps are in the mid to high 30s, and it can get in the 60s during the day.

The broccoli has flowered already, and doing it again which was a treat. Delicate yellow flowers in the late fall and winter, they are what comprises the broccoli heads before harvesting. Mine were tiny and hardly worth cutting, but they made great blooms.

Onions, peppers, and berries are in the garage and are producing but very slowly. I enjoy getting berries in December, and the peppers will probably ripen in the spring when the temps go back up.

Berries!

Both the Caroline and Heritage plants made a third crop, these are the berries. Blackberries are outside overwintering.

Onions making seed pods

I got a ton of green onions from the other pot, this one was an experiment to see how long I could stretch it and still get usable produce. Seeds pods were a mulligan… Mild hot peppers are in the background, creeping along.

Other developments

I harvested seeds from just about everything, they are in paper envelopes in the fridge being dormant. I will plan these guys next spring, fingers crossed I’ll get plants despite them being hybrids. Winter wheat went in last week, I learned to plant the correct density and to add the correct top dress nitrogen fertilizer at sowing. This is what the farmers do, I’m learning agonizing slowly what they all know. Apparently spring wheat isn’t too common here due to the heat, mostly winter wheat which I was about a month behind on getting in. The summer/fall crops I put in were stunted and moldy, lack of nitrogen and bad timing. But they did make wheat berries, which will get planted come March. I could have three wheat crops, just about evenly spaced in time but the late summer would be iffy.

Sunflower oil

Here’s some of the seeds I got from my sunflowers.

PITA to get the seeds off the plant. I found a link to a homebrew oil press, and got the steel pipe to fab the outer housing. Looks like I have to stick the seeds in blender and then heat and compress the pellet to extract the oil.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html

These seeds weren’t the kind you see in the store, they are less robust and the husk is tightly bound to the kernel. I have about a 3/4 quart of oil seed, hopefully I can get some oil to see if it’s worth a damn. If not, I can buy some seed to test the press and then fool with the sunflowers later. I will eventually need to build or buy a huller, apparently they are very uncommon and don’t work worth a hoot. The principal is simple enough, a rough rotating cone working in a tapered bore with a feed slot and adjustable spacing but they execution is bad. I can fab a cast iron model but I might try to score an antique off Ebay to save time.

Flying Pests

Look closely. Fargin’ goldfinches pillaging my plants, so a lesson is to factor that in. I figure a 50’x50′ area will produce way too many for a few birds to make a dent in. Bees LOVED these, which offset my fury at the finches. But who can stay mad at them, they are just too darn cute.

Five food items we can’t live without (literally)

Posted on September 8, 2014 by BigDuke6

I was putting the final items on my last BePrepared supply order, and it occurred to me that I had totally underestimated my need for salt. For some reason, I figured 2 cardboard cans of Morton’s would be plenty (that’s about 3 pounds). I started calculating daily usage, times my family for a year and that came to 25 pounds. Yikes…sure missed that one. So I added enough to cover me conservatively for a year or more, it’s cheap as heck and compact.

You simply can’t survive with no salt, so this goes to number two on the must-have list behind clean water.

Number three is probably sugar. Once a crisis is underway, that will be difficult if not impossible to obtain, and it goes in just about every kind of food imaginable. Daily sugar intake is at least double salt, so I went with 60 pounds.

Number four, probably powdered milk. No way to get dairy unless you own one.

Number five, powdered eggs.

Everything else you can grow, make, or gather. Spices, oil, nuts, fish and game, wheat, vegetables, beer, vinegar, yeast (sourdough), etc. I keep going back to the mental image of a homesteader packing the Conestoga to make the journey out west, they had far less sophisticated things but managed OK.

Gardening and self-sufficiency in a crisis, looking back

Posted on August 1, 2014 by BigDuke6

The reason for my garden was to see how growing my own stuff would actually work, versus just tossing some seeds in a can and hoping it would suffice later. Overall, things have worked out very well and I’ve learned A LOT about what grows best and how to keep everything alive. I need to record the yields of everything vs the square footage required in order to get an idea of how much seed, soil, and area is needed per person to survive. I also wanted to see which crops were the most efficient in terms of nutrition vs space vs work required.

My conclusions so far:

Sunflowers are fab. They grow with minimal care, and yield plenty of seeds per plant. They grow in planters as well as outside, albeit 1/2 the height. You can get oil and seed, so they are a must-have IMO. Easy to plant, save some seeds and you are good to go next season.
Berries are also fab. These plants are very fast growing, and will (over time) extend as far as you want with little care. They provide fruit, vs trees which take years to produce. I’m pleased with the results, I have gotten quite a few berries just from the small starter canes. They propagate like weeds and can be scaled up as needed.
Kale and Orach. Good yields, not picky about the weather. Can’t really say that about lettuce and spinach, the latter has been a waste of time.
Onions, peppers, and carrots. Same, great yields and not too hard to grow.
Wheat. Sensitive to season, soil, water, and nitrogen. Working on a second summer crop that was planted with more space between plants and in potting soil. The spring crop was stunted and was accidentally mowed, so I didn’t get a yield although it would have been poor. This is a work in progress, I think it will end up being the most labor intensive thing I planted given the steps needed to go from seed to flour.

I’m looking forward to next spring, I plan on planting corn, more wheat, potatoes, and some other settler-type stuff like turnips. I didn’t have time or space to do the starch crops this year. I can now see how one could be self-sufficient, there’s all the vitamins and calories in what I listed. It will all store, I will try the root cellar and see how that goes.

Broccolypse Now

Posted on July 14, 2014 by BigDuke6

The horror…stupid cabbage worms and yet another species of worm defoliated my broccoli in a day. I bought some Ortho spray (forget the name), but it didn’t seem to slow them down at all. Oh well, guess it’s part of the learning process. I have to see what kills the damn bugs, that and plant earlier.

On a happier note, the lettuce is going well (see it in the background) and I should have a good second crop in 2-3 weeks. The trick is to sprout the seeds indoors and transfer to the planter, works great. I have some Jericho lettuce started today using this method, the red pot has two plants that made it but they suffer from near-zero germination in warm weather just like Simpson. It will be interesting to see if it’s any different, the Simpson is sort of delicate and wispy.

YAY!! A Sunflower is peeking out! This is part of 20 plants jammed in two planter boxes, the seem to like it OK but don’t get nearly as tall as the ones in the dirt. Which is good, since they’d topple over. I have high hopes for these, assuming I can keep the 4 legged pests at bay.

The berry patch. One Heritage Raspberry, one Black Satin blackberry, and another everbearing that I forget. Looking good, they love being in the big pots and are thriving. Sadly, I bought two each of the latter but the retards at BerriesUnlimited shipped them sideways jammed in a tiny box with only some foam peanuts to cushion the plants. I’m keeping those watered but I think they were killed in transit, one busted off the main cane and the other was shocked by overpruning. We will see come spring, but I’m deeply skeptical I’ll get plants.

Two more lessons of the mini-garden

Anything in planters needs to be watered 2-3 times a day, and very few things want full sunlight. Bell peppers want to be shaded, they only get an hour or two afternoon sun and they are happy. They were wilting and losing their buds until I moved them on the porch. THis is actually good news, as my property has a lot of shade. 2-3 hours of good light and most things seem to grow just fine, at least here.

Belated update on the 8 year storage results

Posted on June 22, 2014 by BigDuke6

I forgot to mention a few things when I posted the first round. In no particular order:

1. Powdered milk in the box = iffy. It looked sort of yellowed and smelled odd, it may have been OK but I’m recommending buying it an a vacuum sealed can. I need to break some of this out (I have that as well) and see if it is usable, I hate to blindly assume it’s OK.

2. Potato flakes in a box = fail. This was a 24 month in my pantry test, I made some up and noticed it was not white and tasted like used gym socks. Same thing as the milk, go with the #10 cans and test every few years. Maybe better at 60F, I dunno.

3. #10 cans= win. Even with a half-assed plastic box wrap in a really humid place, none of the cans showed any rust or degradation. I’ve since sealed the space, and ziplocked/dessicant bagged so I should be good for another 25.

Mini-garden pics

Posted on June 22, 2014 by BigDuke6

Compare the original “just geminated/planted” pics to these.

Bell Peppers, Hot peppers (see the red ripe one..)

The bell peppers are just starting to peek out from the flower buds, teeny weeny things right now.

Jalapeno Peppers

Yielding like a mother, just had one. OMG. They are so tasty, just the right heat. Got 25 seeds from one slice, I’ll see if it germinates.

Broccoli. Rocking in the woefully small pot, no heads yet.

Here’s everything else:

Onions,Carrots (made almost 100% and are now transplanted), Front sunflowers (to the right next to the curb)

Frontsun

Rasperry, deck sunflowers (babies)

The bad bunny ate some of the back sunflower plants, so they are up on the deck. Ordered two more raspberry and Darrow blackberry plants, they will be here soon. I’m hooked on having these berries every day, I just walk out and pick some and drop ’em in my cereal. I only get a few every other day, but I should be getting loads with 5 plants going. I’ll need to T-trellis them next year, but they are manageable now.

Spring Wheat

If you look closely, you can see the green wheat berries and head on the taller stalks. The crop is a lot shorter than I thought, Ag sites says 2-4 ft but I recall it being way taller. Maybe it’s going to grow more, but to be heading out is odd. I saw some winter what that the combines were just getting ready to go into, it was really short too so maybe that’s what we get here.

All of this (except the wheat) is being grown in planters in minimal space, it could fit on a balcony or even in a sunny bay window. I think someone could have a decent amount of produce in a 6’x6′ area, especially if they build a rack like a gym bleacher or step ladder to use the volume.

Pretty amazing, really. And I’m just going through the exercise of growing everything on my Day366 list to make sure I can do it for real if needed. It ought to be just a matter of scaling it up then. I’m a ways off from getting through the list, this was the easy stuff and I’ll be doing more exotic things like vertical potatoes, sugar cane, rice, peanuts, beans, and sorghum later.

Odds N Ends

The lettuce has ended, started another round of Simpson leaf in a planter but zero germination. Not sure what happened, but going 1/8″ deep this time to see if I can get it going mid-summer. Trying spinach again, 5 of 10 came up in partial shade so reseeding that at 1/8″. Kale is kicking it, 4 of 4 and sprouted in 3 days. Replaced the original lettuce with Jericho (warm weather variety) , and started a pot of Orach which is some Asian green that likes it hot. All this is an effort to make salad year round, need that green leafy veg. Supposedly fall is another time to grow all this but I’m skeptical, it seems to only like cool weather with rain and overcast.

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Emergency prep on a small scale

Category Archives: Food